Choice – pick one of several choices

The Choice node asks Laya to pick exactly one of several choices that you define, for example which department should handle an e-mail or what a ticket is about. Laya returns the picked choice and the probability of every choice. The probabilities always add up to 100 %.

When to use Choice

• The possible answers are different things without an order: departments, topics, products, languages, document types.
• Exactly one answer is correct.

Settings

📷 Image placeholder: Screenshot of the Choice settings panel with the Choices list (three rows Sales / Support / Billing with descriptions and the “Add Item” button).

Input

Output

Options

Defining the choices

Option A – In the list

Enter one choice per row. The Description is optional but strongly recommended: it tells Laya what the choice means and improves accuracy noticeably.

The name in the Choice column is exactly what Laya returns in choice, so use names that you want to branch on later. The names may be in any language, also different from the text.

Option B – From a variable or JavaScript

Fill Choices (Variable) when the choices are not fixed, for example when they come from a database or a previous step. Two formats are accepted.

A list of names

msg.categories = ["Payment", "Delivery", "Technical problem"];

An object: name → description (the description may be empty)

msg.categories = {
  "Payment": "invoices, charges, refunds",
  "Delivery": "parcels, tracking, delays",
  "Technical problem": ""
};

Then set Choices (Variable) to Message scope with categories. You can also type the JSON directly into the field with Custom scope.

Result

Example for “You charged my March invoice twice. I want my money back right now!”:

{
  "type": "choice",
  "choice": "Billing",
  "probabilities": { "Sales": 0.0338, "Support": 0.1038, "Billing": 0.8624 },
  "confidence": 0.71,
  "answer_confidence": 0.8624,
  "action": { "act_probability": 1.0 },
  "model": "laya-rl-agent",
  "usage": { "truncated": false, "...": "…" },
  "routing": { "model": "english", "...": "…" }
}

Branching with a Switch node

Connect a Switch node and add one condition per choice:

msg.laya.choice == "Sales"
msg.laya.choice == "Support"
msg.laya.choice == "Billing"

To send uncertain answers to a human first, put this condition at the top of the Switch:

msg.laya.answer_confidence < 0.7
 
// or, with Min Confidence = 0.7:
msg.laya.low_confidence == true

var p = Object.values(msg.laya.probabilities).sort(function (a, b) { return b - a; });
 
msg.closeCall = (p[0] - p[1]) < 0.1;   // true → let a human decide
return msg;

Batch mode

With Batch on, every record in Text gets the same question and choices.

Input

msg.text = {
  "M1": "Please refund my double payment.",
  "M2": "The app crashes when I log in."
};

Result

msg.laya.M1.choice   // "Billing"
msg.laya.M2.choice   // "Support"

Up to 64 records go into one request. More are split automatically.

Tips

Errors